March 16, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 7, 1429

GAZA CITY, March 15: An Israeli air strike on Saturday killed three Islamic Jihad militants readying to fire rockets from Gaza, medics and the radical Palestinian group said, a day before US Vice President Dick Cheney begins a regional tour.

Three more Islamic Jihad militants were wounded earlier the same day east of Gaza City, two of them seriously, as they readied missiles, medics said. The deadly strike took place to the north of the city.

An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the reports, adding that Gaza militants had fired four rockets at Israel, three of which had struck without causing casualties.

The army has carried out near-daily air and ground strikes on Gaza since the Islamist movement Hamas came to power last June in a bid to halt rocket fire on Israeli towns.

Amid the tit-for-tat shooting, the armed wing of Hamas said it could strike Israeli helicopters with weapons which the Palestinian Authority abandoned when its forces were driven out of Gaza last June.

The statement came after Israeli television said an army helicopter was hit by Palestinian fire on Friday during a Gaza overflight, the first incident of its kind in several years.

“We consider the targeting of Israeli aircraft to be a new development because certain weapons became available to us after the military stabilisation,” Abu Obeida, a spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, told AFP.

He was referring to last June when Hamas fighters evicted forces loyal to Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas in a week of deadly street-battles.

“These weapons were in the arsenals of the Authority and were supplied to them by foreign countries,” he said, referring to Abbas’s Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

Abu Obeida would not specify what weapons Hamas used against the helicopter, but Hamas-run TV in Gaza has broadcast footage of fighters firing heavy machine-guns that could be used against aircraft.

The Israeli army has declined to comment on the incident.

Israel has accused Hamas of smuggling Iranian-supplied weapons across the border with Egypt, where a barrier fence was blown apart in January and left open for nearly two weeks before being resealed in early February.

Cheney is to visit both Israel and the occupied West Bank on his 10-day Middle East trip.

He is to meet Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and, separately, Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas to push both sides forward on the peace talks they restarted after a US conference in November.

“He’s going basically as a good soldier in terms of the Annapolis process,” Washington’s former UN ambassador John Bolton said of the November meeting.

“It’s just part of his responsibility. It also puts less prestige on the line than if the president went, though the president is going back in May.” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, whose recent visit led both sides to resume talks despite Israeli raids on Gaza in response to rocket attacks, is expected to return in April as part of an all-out US effort to secure a deal before Bush leaves office in January 2009.—AFP